MANILA: Philippine security agencies stepped up safety protocols on Saturday after Vice President Sara Duterte said she would have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr assassinated if she herself were killed.
In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the two most powerful political families in the Southeast Asian nation, Duterte told an early morning press conference that she had spoken to an assassin and instructed him to kill Marcos, his wife, and the speaker of the Philippine House, if she were to be killed.
“I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (first lady) Liza Araneta, and (Speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. “I said, do not stop until you kill them, and then he said yes.”
She was responding to an online commenter urging her to stay safe, saying she was in enemy territory as she was at the lower chamber of Congress overnight with her chief of staff. Duterte did not cite any alleged threat against herself.
The Presidential Security Command said it had heightened and strengthened security protocols. “We are also closely coordinating with law enforcement agencies to detect, deter and defend against any and all threats to the president and the first family,” it said in a statement.
Police Chief Rommel Francisco Marbil said he had ordered an immediate investigation, adding that “any direct or indirect threat to his life must be addressed with the highest level of urgency.”
The Presidential Communications Office said any threat to the life of the president must always be taken seriously.
However, Duterte told reporters on Saturday afternoon: “Thinking and talking about it is different from actually doing it,” adding there was already a threat to her life. “When that happens, there will be an investigation on my death. The investigation on their deaths will be next.”
Political support
Her strong comments probably will not dent her political support, said Jean Encinas-Franco, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines. “If anything, this type of rhetoric brings her even closer to what her father’s supporters liked about him.”
The daughter of Marcos’ predecessor as president, Duterte resigned from the Marcos cabinet in June while remaining vice president, signalling the collapse of a formidable political alliance that helped her and Marcos, son and namesake of the late authoritarian leader, to secure their 2022 electoral victories by wide margins.
Speaker Romualdez, a cousin of Marcos, has slashed the vice presidential office’s budget by nearly two-thirds.
Duterte’s outburst is the latest in a series of startling signs of the feud at the top of Philippine politics. In October, she accused Marcos of incompetence and said she had imagined cutting the president’s head off.
The two families are at odds over issues including foreign policy and former President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly war on drugs.
In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately from the president and has no official duties. Many vice presidents have pursued social development activities, while some have been appointed to cabinet posts.
The country is gearing up for mid-term elections in May, seen as a litmus test of Marcos’ popularity and a chance for him to consolidate power and groom a successor before his single six-year term ends in 2028.
Past political violence in the Philippines has included the assassination of Benigno Aquino, a senator who staunchly opposed the rule the elder Marcos, as he exited his plane upon arrival home from political exile in 1983.
Duterte's latest meltdown came after the House of Representatives ordered Duterte's chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, detained for contempt after she was accused of repeatedly lying in the chamber's investigation on how the vice president's office used more than 650 million pesos ($11 million) in confidential funds.
Lopez was also accused of “undue interference” in House proceedings focused on Duterte’s spending of public funds, after she wrought the Commission on Audit asking them not to cooperate with the House investigation.
In October, Duterte said she felt “used” after teaming with Marcos for the May 2022 election, which they won by a landslide.
Duterte remains the constitutional successor to the 67-year-old president.
